Art and Design

The intersection of art and design is a fascinating space where creativity and functionality meet. It is a place where artists and designers come together to create beautiful, innovative, and practical objects that serve a purpose beyond just aesthetics.

In this space, artists bring their unique perspectives and skills to the table, creating works that are not only visually stunning but also thought-provoking.

Designers, on the other hand, bring their expertise in problem-solving and functionality to ensure that the final product meets the needs of its users. The result is often a seamless blend of form and function that transcends traditional boundaries between art and design.

Frida Kahlo T-Shirt

This amazing tee features the iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, in grayscale, but with the lips and the roses in colours, creating a beautiful contrast. Inspired by Mexico’s popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class and race in Mexican society.Read More →

Japanese flower arranging featured image

The arrangements of flowers offer far more than a pattern employing flowers and foliage neatly distributed in an appropriate container.
Not only is it a form of relaxation, but flower arrangement reawakens an awareness of nature upon which a philosophy – that of restraint and simplicity — is based.Read More →

Hilda surprised by a goat behind her by Duane Bryers

One of my favourite pinup artists was Minnesota born Duane Bryers, creator of the famous Hilda, a pleasingly, popular and plump pinup girl. Bryers’ background was as interesting as his illustrations. Born in northern Michigan, he excelled at acrobatics as a child. His family moved to Virginia, Minnesota, at 12 and he soon had the neighbourhood gang putting on the “Jingling Brothers circus, complete with burlap-sack sidewalls.Read More →

Op Art Example Victor Vasarely

Op art is a style of modern art that emerged in the 1960s, using optical effects to play with the viewer’s perception. It was led by Richard Anuszkiewicz, Bridget Riley, and Victor Vasarely, and had a significant impact on graphic and interior design. Interest in op art has decreased since its heyday, making it seem like a historical event.Read More →

Mies Chair and Ottoman featured image

Four architects—Andrea Branzi, Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello, Massimo Morozzi—and two designers—Dario Bartolini and Lucia Bartolini—founded Archizoom this Italian avant-garde design studio in 1966 in Florence, Italy. They focused on exhibition installations and architecture and designing interiors and goods as part of the Italian Anti-Design or Radical Design movement.Read More →

The Painting of John F. Kennedy and Pope John XXIII, entitled the “Peace Sowers,” was done by Walter Molino (1915 – 1997). Molino shows the men moving hand-in-hand through a plowed field scattering “seeds of goodwill.” Molino’s placard underneath the painting reads;Read More →

Tachisme is frequently used interchangeably with art informel or Lyrical Abstraction to refer to the abstract art movement that flourished in Europe, particularly France, in the late 1940s and 1950s.Read More →

Cubism: Colour Library

Cubism was one of the most important art styles in the West this century. It started when Picasso and BraqueRead More →

Koloman Moser Painting

Kolman Moser was an Austrian, designer, metal worker and graphic designer. He was born in Vienna.

He designed for the Wiener Mode and in 1895 with other artists produced the Allegories set of folio volumes. It was during this time that he met Gustav Klimt.Read More →

Van Gogh Starry Night

Van Gogh is one of my favourite artists. The painting “Starry Night” is one of his most beloved.   It is an authentic landscape and a projection of Van Gogh’s inner being.  Vortexes of deep azure spin around stars and a crescent moon.  A giant green, black cypress tree blows in the wind. Read More →

The Innocent Eye Test by Mark Tansy

“The Innocent Eye Test” (1981) is perhaps the best-known work of Mark Tansey and one of his most successful. ItRead More →

Rolodex

The Rolodex is a desktop card file system. In the 1940s, Arnold Neustadter’s Company Zephyr American produced the Autodesk, a standard addressRead More →

Osamu Tezuka featured image

OSAMU TEZUKA, who was revered as the “god of manga,” watched Bambi eighty times, until he had memorised every frame, and dreamed of equaling or surpassing Disney realism in his own animation.Read More →

Hannah Hoch's 1925 "Equillibre," or Balance," was originally titled "America Balancing Europe."

As a designer, I am passionate about the history of art and their influence on ‘visual design.’  In art history, Dada is the artistic movement that preceded Surrealism, it began in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1916 by a group of mostly painters and painters.  Dada artworks challenged the preconceived notions of what art meant.  Many Dadaists felt that the way to salvation was through political anarchy, the natural emotions, the intuitive and the irrational.Read More →

Kelmscott Press

Morris believed his responsibility was “to revive a sense of beauty in home life, to restore the dignity of art to household decoration.Read More →

two fridas

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist that lived most of her life and physical pain, yet she continued to paint until her death, her artwork records her suffering and experiences as a woman. She was born to a Mexican mother and a German father.Read More →

Keith Haring Icons

Keith Haring was best known for his graffiti-like painting, initially on the black paper used to cover discontinued billboard advertisements in the New York subway. After after a feverish 1980’s style career of surging popular success and grudging critical attention, Haring died of AIDS in 1991 at the age of 31.Read More →

Rose Mousse pattern for upholstery, cotton and silk (1920), Metropolitan Museum of Art by André Mare

Mare André was a french painter, decorator and furniture designer. He studied painting, at the Academie Julian, Paris. Read More →

Walter Molino shooting

Walter Molino was born in 1915 and died in 1997 at age 82. He began working professionally as an illustrator and caricaturist in 1935 for a newspaper and two children’s magazines, followed by a satirical magazine and several comic strip series.Read More →

Michele De Lucchi featured image

At the Universita di Firenze, he experimented with new forms of art and film. In 1973, he created the Cavart group alongside Piero Brombin, Pier Paola Bortolami, Boris Pastrovicchio, and Valerio Tridenti, which was active in Architettura Radicale, filmmaking, written works, and happenings. Read More →